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Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Charges dropped against Boynton mom who fought son’s circumcision

by Daphne Duret
The case of the Boynton Beach mother arrested after she took her son on
the run rather than let his father have him circumcised is now
officially over.

Prosecutors dropped criminal charges against 32-year-old Heather
Hironimus weeks ago after she completed an 18-month program to keep the
state from pursuing the case that could have landed her in prison for
up to five years.

Hironimus became the subject of national attention after Florida’s 4th
District Court of Appeal upheld a ruling forcing Hironimus to go
through with a 2012 agreement she had signed allowing the boy’s father,
Dennis Nebus of Boca Raton, to have their son circumcised. When she
later changed her mind about the agreement, Palm Beach County Circuit
Judge Jeffrey Gillen ruled to enforce the agreement anyway.

Hironimus took her then 4½-year-old son away in early 2015, a violation
of a civil court order requiring her to turn him over to Nebus.

Authorities reunited the boy with his father after Hironumus was
arrested in May of that year.

By then, Hironimus had won the praise of anti-circumcision groups
around the country, who sparked a small protest outside Joe DiMaggio
Children’s hospital after her arrest, when word leaked that Nebus may
have taken the boy there to be circumcised. It is unclear when the boy
was circumcised.

In July 2015, defense attorney Richard Tendler worked out an agreement
with prosecutors on Hironimus’ behalf for her to enter a pretrial
intervention program that included a mental heath evaluation, a
four-hour parenting course and other provisions.

Assistant State Attorney Craig Williams filed a notice with Circuit
Judge Glenn Kelley on Jan. 17 stating that Hironimus has successfully
completed the program, so prosecutors would be dropping the single
felony charge of interference with custody.

Monday, January 23, 2017

Teen attempts circumcision with machete after being teased

A teenager was rushed to hospital in Zimbabwe when he attempted to
circumcise himself using a machete after his friends mocked his penis.

The teen attempted the DIY circumcision using the nearest sharp
object he could find after his friends told him he would not get a
girlfriend because he still had his foreskin in tact.

The boy was rushed to St Luke's Mission Hospital in the
country's Lupane District, where he spent two days recovering from the
botched procedure, according to the Daily Mail.

Staff at the clinic also carried out the circumcision operation that the boy had attempted on himself.

A doctor said he did not understand why the boy had tried to
circumcise himself as healthcare workers would have visited his house
to perform the routine op.

Dr Nyasha Masuka, medical director of Matabeleland North
Province, told news website My Zimbabwe: "It seems the other boys were
laughing at him for not being circumcised so he used a machete to
circumcise himself and he injured himself in the process.'

"He was rushed to St Lukes Hospital where the health staff circumcised him." [Would they have done that if he had attempted to cut any other part off?]
Dr George Mature, medical officer for Lupane district, said
other patients at the hospital were 'shocked' that the boy had had the
courage to take the weapon to his own penis. [No shock at the cowardice of the bullies who drove him to it?]
He said: "The patients who were admitted with him were wondering how he managed to do it.
"The good thing is that he wounded the outer layer of foreskin.
So we had to keep him at the hospital to monitor him as he had used a
clinically inappropriate tool so we were worried that it could have
caused an infection."

The boy, who has not been named, was rushed to a hospital in the
Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, after the incident at a clinic in a
local suburb, which it is believed the surgeon's laser scalpel might
have slipped.

Chilean officials oppose intersex children
‘normalization’ surgery

by Michael K. Lavers

The Chilean government has urged
doctors in the South American country to no longer perform surgeries
that “normalize” the sex of intersex children.

Undersecretary of Health Jaime Burrows and
Undersecretary of
Assistance Networks Gisela Alarcón in a document the Chilean Ministry
of Health released last week expressed its opposition to “unnecessary
‘normalization’ treatments of intersex children” that include “irreversible genital surgeries until they
are of a sufficient age to make decisions about their bodies.”

Camilo Godoy Peña, a Chilean LGBT rights advocate, on
Jan. 8
noted on his Facebook page that the document, which is dated Dec. 22,
also contains a series of recommendations for each branch of the
country’s public health system. These include the creation of a round
table of endocrinologists, gynecologists, psychiatrists and other
specialists to determine “which action to take in each case” of an
intersex child.

Godoy said this document is the first time the Chilean
government has provided “clear instruction” on the treatment of
intersex children.

“From this point forward there is a concrete tool to use
to
enforce the human rights of a group of people who have ‘been made
invisible,’” he wrote on his Facebook page. “For decades they have been
victims of violence, torture and ignorance.”

The Chilean government released its recommendations less
than
three months after Godoy presented a letter to President Michelle
Bachelet that urged her government to do more to protect the rights of
intersex people.

U.N. report critical of ‘involuntary genital
normalizing surgery’
Opposition to what advocates have described as Intersex
Genital Mutilation has increased in recent years.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture in 2013 issued a
report
that notes intersex children who undergo “involuntary genital
normalizing surgery” face “permanent, irreversible infertility” and
“severe mental suffering.” The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human
Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights are
among the other international bodies that have expressed concern over
the treatment of intersex people.

Lawmakers in Malta last year approved a bill that bans
doctors
from performing “surgical intervention on the sex characteristics of a
minor” until he or she can provide “informed consent.”

A Maryland law that allows intersex people to legally
change
the gender on their birth certificates without surgery took effect last
October. German parents since 2013 have been able to designate the
gender on their children’s birth certificates as “indeterminate.”

An Irish law that allows transgender people to legally
change
their gender without medical intervention took effect last September.
Advocates have criticized the statute because it does not include
intersex people.

Boy fights for manhood after botched circumcision

by Dalton Nyabund
A 10-year-old boy risks losing his genitals after a
medical circumcision went awry.

In a classic case of professional negligence, doctors
now say
[name] from [place] may require grafting, following botched
circumcision at Vihiga County Hospital.

When The Standard on Sunday visited the Standard Four
pupil and
his mother at Kisumu’s St Monica Hospital where he had been referred to
yesterday, he was in great pain as doctors tried to treat the wound.

A tube connected to his crotch leads to a tube sitting
between
his legs. The urinary catheter is perhaps the only indication that all
is not well with the cheerful boy with a singsong voice.

Dr Hillary Awuor, St Monica Hospital’s administrator,
says the
only way to save the genital now is through grafting, but the wound
must first be treated. He said the penis had lost sensation.

“The grafting cannot be done on a raw wound. The wound
has to show some signs of healing and resolution,” said Awour.

Grafting in this case is a surgical procedure where skin
will be
removed from one part of [name]’s body and used to replace the damaged
penile skin.

Dr Awuor said although there are complications
associated with this kind of surgery. The surgeon was hopeful that it
would work.

The boy’s mother, [name], said she walked into Vihiga
County
Hospital with her son on November 2 and paid Sh1, 000 for a
procedure most of his agemates in Luhya land were undergoing bravely.

The nurse who performed the surgery wrongly sliced the
foreskin
and as soon as the procedure was complete, the wound started swelling.
But, the nurse dismissed this as normal and prescribed a few drugs that
would take care of it.

PUS OZZING
It occurred to Ms [name] that her only child may have
been
wrongly sliced when the other boys were healing, yet her son’s was
becoming septic with pus oozing from the sinuses around the penis.

“He cried throughout the process and the nurse said it
was
normal. The next day his penis started swelling and two days later, it
developed blisters but the nurse kept telling me it was normal. He just
asked me to give him the drugs he had prescribed,” narrated Ms [name].

About a month later, the wound was getting worse. The
pain the
boy felt on his crotch had suddenly died down. The wound was rotting.
So she went back to the same hospital to seek further care and answers.

She was referred to a surgeon of the hospital who agreed
that
the procedure was wrongly done. The wound had developed dead debris and
smelly, abnormal growth around it.

[name] was immediately admitted to the surgical ward,
awaiting
a corrective surgery. But since the wound was septic, the surgeon first
cleaned it and removed the dead tissue, a process called debridement.

She was directed to bathe him with warm, salty water for
four
days for the wound to heal before the plastic surgery could be done.

On December 5 when the surgery was due, however, doctors
in public hospitals downed tools and they were abandoned.

Circumcisers in Kuria embark on door-to-door forceful
circumcision

by George Juma For Citizen Digital

Police in Kuria East Sub County have vowed to take
punitive measures against elders and circumcisers in the region who
have embarked on a door-to-door forceful traditional cut for both males
and females. ["Forceful
circumcision" is a double euphemism. It would be better called "rape by
knife".]
The circumcisers and the elders, also known as Wazee wa
Kimila, reportedly move door-to-door fishing out the girls and boys who
are yet to face the cut and ferrying them forcefully for circumcision
at established places.

Speaking to Citizen Digital, Kuria East Sub County
Deputy County Commissioner Mr Westly Koech said that so far they have
arrested several people linked to the outlawed exercise during their
ongoing anti-FGM operations in the region.

On Monday, Mr Koech said they arrested three suspects
who were found moving door-to-door harassing the family of the
uncircumcised individuals and have put them behind bars.

He said the group of circumcisers and the elders are
crisscrossing the sub county on a motorbike looking for uncircumcised
people and forcing them to undergo the cut.

The DCC said old men
who had been circumcised at health facilities are also being forced to
undergo the traditional cut, adding that police on Monday
rescued an old man who was being ferried on a motorcycle for
circumcision.

Mr Koech has issued a stern warning to the circumcisers
and any other person linked to FGM in Kuria or forceful circumcision
for men in the region saying that they are not going to spare them in
the ongoing crackdown in the region.

He further faulted the victims of such harassment saying
that most of them are not willing to come to the station to record
statements to enable police to take action. He, however, assured that
they are pursuing the suspects.